Language rift sparks ill will in district

The green plastic shades are always down, the door is locked, and the bulldog poster outside suggests that a sinister dog lives inside the station for Engine 7.

Squeegee, the American bulldog who rides on the firetruck whenever there is a call, is tame.

But Engine 7's three shifts of firefighters, who include the Lawrence Fire Department's only two female firefighters, work in one of the city's hottest fire districts.

The Arlington neighborhood still bears the scars of fires from years ago, as well as the outbreaks of recent months, like last summer's string of fires that caused two deaths and prompted some people to keep packed suitcases at the door.

The neighborhood also bears witness to the changing face of Lawrence.

To the right of the fire station, on Park Street, is Borinque Bodega, the scene of a shootout a couple of years ago. Across the street is La Escosesa seafood restaurant, and the doorway into a strip mall that houses a coin-operated laundry where the television is always playing programs in Spanish. A few blocks east on Park Street is a remnant of Lawrence's days as a textile capital, Malden Mills Industries Inc.

Decades ago, the neighborhood was Irish, Canadian, Italian, Greek -- the predominant ethnic groups in the Fire Department today. But by the time Malden Mills was devastated by a fire in 1995, the district's population had become nearly entirely Dominican and Puerto Rican -- its restaurants, homeowners, domino players, pigeon feeders, but not so much its firefighters.

These days, firefighters and residents cross paths mostly in an emergency. "They don't like us," Lieutenant Peter Bernard, half-joking, says of the neighbors.

But although Engine 7 serves a district who residents speak a language foreign to nearly all of the firefighters, the firehouse and the neighborhood have one thing in common: poverty.

Engine 7 has the most decrepit building in the Fire Department, with an assortment of leaks, mousetraps, faulty radiators, and old windows.

The Arlington district is Lawrence's poorest neighborhood, with per capita income of $8,243 to $10,632 in its three census tracts in 2000, compared with a statewide average of $25,952.

The love-hate relationship between the neighborhood and the firefighters goes both ways. "As a rule we keep the shades down," said Bernard. Next to the door is a burglar alarm, because the station house has been broken into several times before.

Still, the houses of the firefighters and residents have some similarities.

Dominicans have stamps and candles of San Miguel, an archangel in Roman-style clothes and boots, who holds a sword and a balance while casting down Satan. The firefighters have a small picture of St. Florian, a helmeted Roman soldier standing next to an angel, pouring water onto a burning house.

During the annual citywide Hispanic week, the firefighters say, neighbors enjoy seeing the crew hang plantains from a tree outside the station or Dominican and Puerto Rican flags from the firetruck.

But more often, firefighters get no response from the neighborhood.

When fire investigators canvassed the district looking for the suspects believed to be responsible for various fires last June, they hung posters announcing a $5,000 reward and broadcast the reward on the radio. Two residents -- a mother and her 3-month-old daughter -- had died in one of the fires.

In six months of intensive investigation, the department received only one phone call regarding the case, but the caller offered no information. Ultimately, an Arlington resident was charged with arson and murder.

The mistrust was felt more personally by firefighters when a young man was shot in the chest last summer. Firefighters recall that when they arrived on the scene at Bromfield Street, they met a hostile crowd of teenagers who cursed at them and shouted for them to save the boy.

Ana Luna, who has lived in the neighborhood for 20 years and is the director of a nonprofit group called Arlington Community Trabajando, said that while firefighters and the station are seen as a positive presence, it would be helpful to have more of them who speak Spanish.

"If they speak Spanish, it removes the communication barrier between the firefighters and the communities and takes away the possibility of misunderstanding," she said. "If someone is calling you and you don't speak the language, how are you going to help them?"

Despite the strained relationship with neighborhood residents, the members of Engine 7 are loyal to the 109-year-old firehouse.

For a time this winter, the firefighters would call Chief Joseph Marquis, complaining there was no heat. When Marquis asked them to move to the central station while the boiler could get repaired, the firefighters refused.

Why?

"We love it here," said Cyril Lane, a 13-year veteran of the department. "We would never leave. This is home."